Last year, Travis Kelce revealed just how many calories he consumes each day to keep his 6-foot-five, 260-pound physique in football-ready shape. It was a whopping 4,000 calories, and now the Kansas Chiefs star’s personal chef Kumar Ferguson is revealing all the details on what exactly that diet includes.
Ferguson—who grew up alongside Kelce and “cooked for all the bros” throughout their childhood—was actually working as a truck driver when his old pal called him with a request. He needed to beef up his diet and decided to employ Kumar, despite the fact that he had never worked in a professional kitchen before.
“I flew out four days later and we haven’t looked back since,” Ferguson told Kansas City Magazine. Since 2016, he has been cooking three meals a day for the athlete, including oatmeal with fresh fruit for breakfast and seafood Alfredo for dinner. And while Ferguson draws much of his culinary inspiration from experiencing different cuisines while on the road, he’s also tapped into Kelce’s childhood favorites, too.
“His dad is actually a grill master, so that’s where I got filets in our diet,” Ferguson said, while noting that he incorporates a soul food flare with unexpected seasoning. Deep-fried Australian lobster tails with yum yum sauce and tangy Hawaiian heat wings are among the tight end’s other favorites.
The pair also dines out together. Ferguson raved about their mutual favorite butcher shop, The Upper Cut KC, for snagging grass-fed bone-in filets, and said that they’ve been hitting Rye for chicken-fried steaks with a side of sausage gravy, two sunny-side-up eggs, and mashed potatoes.
And while clearly, Kelce has a rather well-rounded (and delicious?!) diet, he’s notoriously picky. In fact, big brother Jason recently trolled him on an episode of their podcast, New Heights, about his eating habits. “One of the best things about Thanksgiving… was getting to hear my dad scream at my brother to finish his food,” Jason joked in November. “Trav is a picky eater. [He] doesn’t like white sauces, doesn’t like goat, well turns out he doesn’t like Thanksgiving food either.”
